IRELAND FROM A TO Z: PART I

Think ping pong balls dancing right before the next big lottery drawing and you have a good picture of the thoughts bouncing around inside my head when it comes to Ireland.  You’d think a country the size of the state of Maine would have less to offer than most of her European  neighbors; as if size ever really matters!  
 
I could run through the entire alphabet with points of interest and tidbits of information after my week in Ireland, and that’s no blarney.  In fact, I think that’s what I’ll be doing on this fine day.    

A is for Abbey, those priories and friaries numbering in the thousands, the Catholic foundation on which Ireland was built.  Some are in ruins, others as majestic as they are Gothic, each a piece of the puzzle contributing to Ireland’s two thousand year monastic history. 

B is for Blarney, the gift of gab, as in the Irish ability to spew out more words than a dictionary while telling a story; or, alternately, the ability to paint maudlin evocative word-pictures, so sorrowful as to leave the listener crying in their pint of Guinness.  If this blarney is part of the pub scene, undoubtedly someone in the background is singing “Danny Boy”... off key.   

Queen Elizabeth I gets credit for the expression. Apparently she wanted the Irish chiefs to agree to occupy their own lands under title from her. When Cormac Teige MacCarthy, the Lord of Blarney Castle, handled every Royal request for allegiance with subtle diplomacy, promising loyalty to the queen without actually “giving in”, Elizabeth remarked that MacCarthy was giving her “a lot of Blarney.”  

C is for Celtic Cross, credited to Ireland's favorite saint, St. Patrick. St. Patrick wisely combined the circular pagan symbol of worship, the sun, with the Christian cross, thus demonstrating his willingness to adapt heathen practices and symbols to Christian beliefs in order to ease the peoples’ transition from paganism to Christianity.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

D is for Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, home to U2, Guinness, the Book of Kells, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and Ireland’s oldest pub (The Brazen Head).  It’s the birthplace of James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and the Duke of Wellington.  The Duke?  He’s the guy who did Napoleon in at Waterloo.  

E is for Emerald Isle, the moniker of most travel brochures that refers to the lush, green, mystical and magical island of Ireland. Obviously the island is covered with really green,  impossibly-difficult-to-play golf courses given the windy, messy weather responsible for all that green.  Then again, the moniker could be referencing all those green pastures where all those woolly sheep graze.  Your guess is as good as mine.

F is for Famine, as in black potatoes, the ones that rotted in the ground leaving a third of the population of Ireland, a million men, women and children, to starve to death between 1845 and 1849.  A million more hoping to escape a slow death emigrated to the U.S., Canada and  Australia.  Twenty-five percent of those immigrants perished during the torturous twelve week journey in a boat often unfit for the arduous trip.  

G is for Guinness, that dark stout that requires 119.5 seconds to properly pour if one wants to savor the magic of Arthur Guinness’ magical elixir.   Since 1759 those magical bubbles have  swirled and settled around the glass seeking refuge in a wonderland of Guinness before morphing in a brown cloud of glory atop the darkest of beers.  Ask for a pint in any pub in Ireland, and a Guinness will come your way 2 minutes later.

H is for Harp, the official seal of the President of Ireland.  This cultural icon appears on all  government stationary and documents.  The harp is also part of the Guinness logo, although it faces in the opposite direction, which is what usually happens to most who imbibe too many pints and don’t know whether they’re coming or going.

I is for Irish Independence, the end of three hundred years of rebellions and uprisings against the English rule that banned education for the Irish, penalized their Catholic faith and tried to destroy Irish culture.  In 1921, all that came to an end when Ireland gained self-government following a savage War of Independence.  It would take another twenty-eight years for the dust to settle with six counties in Northern Ireland (mostly protestant) remaining part of the United Kingdom, the other twenty-six counties (mainly Catholic) now part of the Republic of Ireland.

J is for James Joyce, Ireland’s great literary voice. Born in Dublin in 1882, he’s undoubtedly the Ulysses of Irish literature. He used the city of Dublin as the setting for all his major works including Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses.  The (ahem) rather filthy mind of the Jesuit-educated writer behind the book Ulysses  caused Ireland to brand the book pornographic.  It was banned in his native country until the 1960s.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

K is for the book of Kells, Ireland’s foremost national treasure.  This magnificent Latin rendition of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was crafted on 13 by 9.5 inch vellum pages by Columban monks. The book was written – no, make that crafted – in the 9th century either on the small island of Iona at St. Colum Cille’s monastery or at a Kells, County Meath, monastery, where it remained until the 17th century when it was moved to Trinity College in Dublin.  
 
The book is known for its elaborate calligraphy, the text written in amazingly beautifully rounded Celtic script with brightly ornamented initial letters.  Animal and human forms were often used to decorate the end of a line of text. 

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

L is for the Luck of the Irish, which historically hasn’t been all that favorable.  Their small island country has been continually plundered and pillaged for centuries, first by the Celts, then the Danes, followed by the Anglo-Normans and finally the British. Through it all an indomitable spirit kept their culture alive and ultimately saw their independence achieved in the latter half of the 20th century.  
 
Some trace the origin of the phrase to America’s gold rush years in the 1800s when the most famous and successful miners were of Irish and Irish American descent.  Over time this  association with mining fortunes led to the expression, ‘the luck of the Irish.’  Unfortunately, it often carried a tone of derision, as if to say, only by sheer luck, as opposed to brains, could these Irish lads succeed.  

M is for Irish Music.  No, I’m not talking U2, Enya, the Clancy Brothers and Thin Lizzy although they all hale from the Emerald Isle.  A trip to Ireland isn’t complete until you’ve been part of a raucous crowd enjoying the blended sounds of a fiddle, a flute or tin whistle, a guitar, a bodhran (a goatskinned drum), and maybe an accordion or mandolin.  A ceilidh (KAY-lee) is an evening of music and dance . . . an Irish hoedown.  Occasionally a song of lament, stories of love lost, emigration to a faraway land, or a heroic rebel death will silence the rowdiness of a pub as the sad lyrics fill the room and the hearts of all those present.  

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Whoa!  That’s quite the alphabet soup; more than you probably can consume in one meal. 
The second course will arrive in another day or two.